Table 1.
Competencies for strategic grantmaking in population health intervention research (PHIR)
| 1. Personal attributes | |
| 1.1. Capacity to foster innovation, including curiosity, creativity and an attitude of possibility, high tolerance for ambiguity and risk, and a willingness to pursue better solutions | |
| 1.2. Passionate about creating positive change, including a commitment to excellence and mission success that drives a focus beyond formal role requirements and tasks | |
| 1.3. Pragmatic and strategic, skilled at identifying and completing the most essential tasks and understanding where and how to influence key decision-making with evidence | |
| 1.4. High emotional and social intelligence, including connecting with and understanding the perspectives of others, building trust, listening and communicating effectively | |
| 1.5. Adept at moving between roles (supervise, lead, mentor) and types of work (conceptual/strategic, administrative logistics) and levels of work (project, program or organizational level) | |
| 1.6. Committed to reflective practice and able to learn from experience and refine approach accordingly | |
| 2. Critical and strategic thinking | |
| 2.1. Understand and critically appraise different forms of evidence, including qualitative and quantitative research, practitioner knowledge, experiential knowledge and traditional/community knowledge | |
| 2.2. Access, review and use evidence to understand the nature, extent, history, root causes and social/economic/political context of an issue | |
| 2.3. Skilled at formal and informal synthesis, including identifying connections, patterns, opportunities and challenges (for example, in data, social/economic/political/organizational context and among stakeholders) | |
| 3. Cultural safety | |
| 3.1. Reflective about own social location, power and privilege, attitudes and assumptions, and context of role as grantmaker | |
| 3.2. Understand the role of social determinants of health, particularly colonization and institutional discrimination, on policies and programs and the health of a community | |
| 3.3. Understand specific histories and cultures of traditional territories in which grantmaking takes place | |
| 3.4. Demonstrate a strengths perspective, encouraging a focus on community resources, skills and assets | |
| 3.5. Prioritize experiential knowledge of community members in developing, implementation, and evaluating and improving policies, programs and services | |
| 4. Team culture and capacity | |
| 4.1. Build and sustain a culture of trust and openness on the team to create space for candid discussion, planning, and evidence uptake | |
| 4.2. Build capacity of team members in areas of specialist knowledge and build content/functional expert knowledge | |
| 4.3. Understand how and when to expand team expertise through use of consultants or intermediaries | |
| 5. Strategic grantmaking: strategy development and implementation | |
| 5.1. Demonstrate expertise in relevant strategy issue area(s), including Population Health Intervention Research, social innovation, and community-based programs | |
| 5.2. Knowledge of local context, including when and how to adapt grantmaking and other initiatives to better meet local opportunities and challenges | |
| 5.3. Understand and demonstrate importance of strategic focus (including rationale for selected issue area, program approach and project activities) to internal and external stakeholders | |
| 5.4. Understand how to manage different sources of risk, such as grantee organizational capacity or the nature/design of grantee initiative | |
| 5.5. Recognize and support the evolving nature of strategy, including working in a developmental manner to adapt strategy to achieve desired results, rather than adhering to a static work plan | |
| 5.6. Operationalize strategy in solicitation and selection process | |
| • Design solicitation and review materials aligned with strategy goals | |
| • Coordinate involvement of external review process | |
| • Critically appraise plans for intervention design and research, including existing evidence, program theory, intended mechanisms of change, research questions, methods, data sources, research rigour, community involvement, partnerships, implementation/adaptation plan, program team, budget, and relevant capacity issues | |
| • Ensure common understanding and use of other considerations in assessment process, such as previous funding relationships, geographic and or/socio-demographic diversity | |
| 5.7. Grants management | |
| • Negotiate grants with selected applicants, balancing organizational requirements with unique community, practice and academic contexts | |
| • Manage grants, including ongoing assessment of grantee capacity, budget, compliance and performance | |
| • Build and maintain meaningful partnerships with grantees to support implementation, understand challenges and encourage collaborative learning and decision-making | |
| 5.8. Strengthen grantees and broader field to increase impact on desired results | |
| • Design grant stream—including type, duration and eligible uses of funding—to best strengthen projects | |
| • Identify and address capacity issues at project level | |
| • Understand when and how to support projects and the field through information sharing, convening, facilitating networks and/or collaborations, identifying and developing leaders, and working with other grantmakers | |
| • Understand implementation science and when to work with projects regarding context, implementation, learning and adaptation | |
| • Act as advocate for projects, using project experience and needs to inform decision-making at program and organizational levels | |
| 5.9. Understand how and when to implement exit strategies, including at the end of a funding relationship with a specific grantee and at the end of a grant across a portfolio | |
| • Diplomatically manage issues that arise when an applicant is not awarded funding, including anticipating and responding to questions from the applicant alongside risk management regarding media and/or political attention | |
| 6. Strategic grantmaking: evaluation and performance measurement | |
| 6.1. Build appropriate foundation for evaluation at project, program and organization levels | |
| • Understand differences among intervention research, implementation science, evaluation, monitoring and performance measurement, as well as the contributions and challenges of each at project, program and organization levels | |
| • Provide appropriate evaluation capacity-building support to colleagues and projects | |
| • Build common and realistic understanding of evaluation goals, questions, scope, use and limitations across internal and external stakeholders | |
| • Integrate evaluative thinking, moving beyond formal focus on utilization to embed focus on learning and adapting | |
| 6.2. Develop program-level evaluation plan with appropriate balance of monitoring, evaluation, and performance measurement | |
| • Use knowledge and critical appraisal of research and evaluation theories, methods and approaches to design evaluation plan | |
| • Develop theory of change detailing context, assumptions, activities, outputs, program theory, and hypothesized mechanisms of change and intended outcomes | |
| • Understand opportunities and challenges associated with evaluation of a grantmaking portfolio | |
| • Balance and address tension between unique evaluation needs for each project with stakeholder expectations for analysis of program- level impact | |
| • Balance focus on accountability and learning to develop monitoring and evaluation framework, with monitoring and evaluation questions, indicators, data sources, frequency of data collection and plans for analysis, use and reporting | |
| 6.3. Translate monitoring and evaluation framework into reporting requirements | |
| • Develop reporting requirements, considering purpose, type, frequency and intended use of reporting | |
| • Balance multiple roles of reporting requirements (including compliance, performance measurement, evaluation, accountability and learning) alongside consideration of administrative burden of grantees | |
| 6.4. Implement monitoring and evaluation plan | |
| • Develop and implement additional data collection methods at program level, as required | |
| • Collect, appraise, analyze and interpret data from project and program levels | |
| • Draw conclusions, create recommendations and develop evaluation products | |
| 6.5. Use monitoring and evaluation for continuous learning, learning loops and adaptation | |
| • Work collaboratively across programs and with projects to share findings, learn and adapt together | |
| • Analyze and present evaluation findings with a utilization focus to inform changes to strategy, grantmaking, policy and practice | |
| 7. Strategic grantmaking: knowledge mobilization for impact | |
| 7.1. Create enabling environment for uptake of project and program findings in practice and policy | |
| • Use knowledge of policy landscape and policy-making process to identify and build relationships with key decision makers | |
| • Build connections or mediate relationships between projects and policy and practice decision makers | |
| 7.2. Prepare and position project and program findings for impact | |
| • Thoughtfully synthesize evidence from funded projects with other relevant research, without oversimplifying or overstating findings | |
| • Use knowledge of social, economic and political context to frame importance and potential contribution of findings to pressing policy and/or practice issues | |
| • Tailor content, design and language of knowledge products to support knowledge use, recognizing different perspectives, pressures and drivers for government, political, professional and community audiences | |
| • Use evidence and understanding of political environment, key stakeholders and relevant opportunities and challenges to translate findings into viable recommendations/options for consideration | |
| • Monitor policy and practice environments to identify opportunities for influence | |
| • Evaluate the impact of knowledge activities to inform future products and processes |